it. Two hundred quid for half an hour’s work, no questions asked. He was hardly going to say no, was he? When he turned up at the house, the bloke answering the door was from Vice Squad and he was nicked. Turns out he was carrying a load of porn mags where the models were no older than those kids over there. So you see why I want to be careful.’
‘If I tell you, I don’t want it going any further. Not even to whoever you bring with you, if you decide to take the job.’
I told him it wouldn’t and he turned and looked over his shoulder, just to make sure no one was listening. No one was, and he turned back to me. ‘I told you on the phone I owned a nightclub, right? Well, a couple of months back, I got an approach to buy it from some, er, businessmen. I wasn’t that interested, not for the amount they wanted to pay, so I said no. They upped the offer but I still wasn’t that sure. You know, I’ve owned the place close to ten years and it’s always made me a good living. I’m the same as you, I’m not rich, but I’m doing OK. As it happens, I thought they could still up the offer, so I held out for more, thinking that I wasn’t so worried either way.’
He paused for a moment to take a gulp from his drink.
‘Then things started to happen. The club started getting unsavoury elements coming in, loud-mouths looking for trouble. There were fights breaking out, furnishings getting smashed, staff threatened, all that sort of shit. Then some of my doormen stopped turning up for work, saying they’d found jobs elsewhere. It didn’t take me long to find out that these buyers were behind it, and that they were people who it wasn’t worth messing with. A few days ago they came back and asked if I’d like to reconsider their original offer.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, what was I meant to do? I liked the place, still do, but there’s no point in clinging on to the past. Especially when the future’s getting ready to kick you right in the bollocks. It just wasn’t worth the aggravation. So I said I’d accept the second offer but not the original.’
I managed a smile. Put in the same position, I’d have done the same thing. You never want to let them know they’re winning. ‘What did they say?’
‘They might have been lowlifes but they were still businessmen. I think they thought they’d won some sort of victory by making me change my mind, and that was good enough for them.’
‘And is it a good price, what they’re offering?’
‘It’s not bad. I could have done worse.’
‘So what’s the problem? Where do I come in?’
‘We both want a straight exchange on neutral ground. Basically, the deeds for the money. They don’t want lawyers involved and they don’t want the taxman seeing any of it. They just want a straight no-hassle swap. And I’m going to get payment in cash, no questions asked. Then I just walk away. Why I need you’s pretty obvious. These people might be businessmen but they’re not, shall we say, averse to using physical means to get what they want. Without the law involved, I’ve got no guarantees that they won’t just make me sign over everything for nothing. With you there, I’ve got a lot more chance they’ll play it fair.’
‘We don’t usually deal with a few hours’ work here and there. The stuff we do’s more long term.’
‘This is an important deal to me. I’ll make it worth your while.’ Fowler took another gulp of his drink while I waited to hear how much ‘worth your while’ meant. ‘As I said, I want three men. One of them’s going to have to be you. Johnny said I should insist on you.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah. He said you could keep a cool head.’ I didn’t say anything so he continued. ‘Five grand. In cash. That’s what I’ll pay for you and two of your best people to come along with me.’
‘That’s a lot of money.’
‘It’s a lot less than I’ll be getting out of this deal. I look at it as a worthwhile investment. One other thing …’
‘What?’
‘I need at least one of the people with me, preferably you, to be carrying.’
I tightened the grip on my glass. ‘I don’t want to get involved in anything like that, Mr Fowler.’
Fowler leant forward and I caught a whiff of his breath. It was a nasty combination of sweet and sour, like air freshener in a Gents’ toilet. ‘Look, I know what you’re saying but I’m dealing with dangerous people here and if one of them does something stupid, like pulls a gun, I don’t want it to mean the end of my retirement fund. I know your background so I know it’s not something you can’t handle, and it’s because of that that I’m paying big money.’
‘Like I told you, I’m not into doing things that are likely to get me put away, and playing around with firearms is not conducive to a free and happy life on the outside.’
‘You offer protection, right? You and your employees guard people who feel threatened. Right?’ I nodded, since he was pretty much on the ball there. ‘Well, I feel threatened, and I want you to guard me for a period of time of what? — no more than a couple of hours tops, and for that I’m going to be paying very serious money. Now I know it’s a risky assignment but it would be for what’s on offer. If I wanted security to go to a council meeting to protect me in case I got waylaid by angry voters then it would be worth a lot less, but it isn’t.’ He paused to finish his drink. ‘But you know as well as I do that there’s virtually no chance anyone’s going to pull anything. It’s just not worth it.’
‘There are a lot of nutters about these days.’
Fowler began to look frustrated. ‘I need an answer. Do you want the work or not?’
The thing about life is there’s always pressure to make quick decisions. Most of the time people tend just to follow their instincts and get by as well as they can. When they don’t follow their instincts, they tend to make mistakes. Often big ones. And it’s usually to do with money.
‘Make it six,’ I told him, ‘and I’ll do it.’ And that, of course, was my mistake.
My job’s a straightforward one. I run an organization that provides security in the form of bodyguards to various minor celebrities, and the occasional dodgy businessman with something to hide, and I’ve done it for the last five years. Funnily enough, it tends to be a pretty uneventful business and none of our people have ever been injured in the line of duty, which I suppose says as much about our clientele as it does about us, and which is just the way I like it. I’ve had my days of excitement and adrenalin. They were fun enough while they lasted but I’m past all that now.
I had reservations about this particular job at the time, but in the end I reckoned that, like most businessmen, Fowler’s buyers weren’t going to do anything to mess up the deal. If they were getting the club at a decent price, which they probably were, then that ought to be enough for them. I know you should never forget how stupid and greedy people can be, but my feeling was that when these blokes saw that their seller had turned up with back-up, they’d be foolish to want a confrontation. I was a bit concerned about the talk of guns but, to be honest with you, I didn’t think they’d resort to that. Again, you had to ask yourself, what would be the point? There’s a lot of gunplay about in London these days but most of the real psychos tend to be the kids, and they don’t go round buying nightclubs.
After Fowler had gone, I tried Johnny Hexham’s number, wanting to know if there was any information he could give me about the nightclub owner and the situation at his place, but he wasn’t answering, so I put in a call to my partner, Joe Riggs, on the office number.
‘Tiger Solutions.’
I cringed like I always did when I heard that name. Tiger Solutions. I should never have let him talk me into that one. Joe reckoned it made the punters think they were dealing with a tough outfit; I thought it made us sound like a fucking wildlife charity.
‘Joe, it’s Max.’
‘Max. How’d it go with Fowler?’
I told him what the deal was, and the amount of money on offer. Joe whistled through his teeth. ‘That’s a lot of cash. It’s getting close to half of what we pulled in in the whole of last month. And in readies, too. What’s the catch?’
‘The buyers are the type who could turn nasty. And this Fowler, there’s definitely something dodgy about him.’
Joe laughed. ‘He’s a nightclub owner, what do you expect? They’re all dodgy, but no worse than some of the people we have to protect. Anyway, let’s not turn down anything this lucrative.’
Like I said, money was always the key. You never want to say no to it. I didn’t mention anything about Fowler demanding that I carry a gun on the night. There was no point. It would just complicate matters. As it
